The Unhappy Tale of the Iveyshire Chickens
On July 8, 2022 by MaryTo cut right to the chase: there isn’t a single chicken left here on our little homestead.
In my last post, I mentioned that the poultry situation here had turned a bit chaotic. Unfortunately, the craziness continued until just a few days ago, when our very last chicken bit the dust.
They were dying inside the coop. They were dying outside the coop. Some of them even refused to go back inside at night, and instead roosted in the barn, in trees or on the kids’ swingset. Big surprise, those ones also ended up dead, or missing entirely.
The ones outside the coop obviously got eaten by various predators. As for the ones inside, I guess something was getting in, attacking them at night, and then the chickens would peck at the injured ones. It was super gross. (It wasn’t until there were only a few left that I finally found a small spot where the chicken wire had been pulled away from the coop roof.)
The most gruesome day of this whole ordeal was when we woke up to three of them dead, and a fourth so injured it was almost unrecognizable. I had to put that one out of her misery.
Now that they’re all gone… Are we rushing out to buy a bunch of chicks to replace all our chickens? Nope. Are we giving up on owning chickens entirely? Also, no. I think we just need to take a little break while we figure out a new, predator-proof coop.
So that’s the sad ending to our first batch of chickens here at Iveyshire. What a mess. Hopefully the next chicken experience will be much, much better!
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I know it wasn’t the best experience but you handled it well.